Don’t touch me now – the negative effects of text entry on a touchscreen while driving

OBJECTIVES: Limiting distraction while driving through in-vehicle information and communication systems is of critical importance for road safety. At the same time, touchscreens are increasingly used for the driver-car interaction in cars while driving. Operating touchscreens while driving uses the same human resources as driving itself. Therefore, it seems highly likely that the operation of touch displays can be more distracting than the operation of physical devices. The present simulation study investigates, how performing complex tasks requiring text entry on a touch display changes driving performance as compared to driving, only, and to a simple task using a physical haptic input device. METHODS: In order to quantify the effects, the ISO certified lane change task was used. In addition, a subjective measure of distraction was analyzed. Twenty-six students participated in a repeated-measures experiment with the distraction factor comprising a baseline, music title selection by touch, navigation adress input by touch, and selecting a radio station with an analogue button. RESULTS: The results show significant differences between these four conditions. Touch operation leads to greater mean deviation, longer reaction time, and poorer lane keeping compared to baseline driving and also compared to radio operation. CONCLUSION: Thus, operation of these somewhat complex functions via touch displays in the vehicle is not recommended due to the strong distracting effect. An alternative for the complex tasks could be speech input. Additionally, only simple tasks should be allowed on touchscreens while driving. However, further research is required to find out what implementations are exactly required.